No more credit cards.

Some merchants would prefer we didn’t use them, it seems. And if we do, in all Canadian provinces except for Quebec, they have the option to add a surcharge that would cover some or all of the processing fees the merchant has to pay to the credit card companies.

Like, they weren’t already adding it in to the cost of the item. Because they never thought of it, right?

But, hey, now they can add a surcharge on top of the old surcharge that was disguised as part of the price. (Oh, they wouldn’t be so unscrupulous, right?)

It’s part of a trend: gouge the working-class heroes and the poor. Bleed us dry.

Prices up on everything, salaries stagnant. Interest rates rising in leaps and bounds, because it’s our fault that Vladimir Putin is such a prick. Who are the central bankers working for, anyway?

Yes, the rich are getting richer, and if they can’t make their killing in the markets, they’ll squeeze you until you drop. Until there isn’t a penny left to take.

But it is never enough for them. They are frothing at the mouth now. Too many patriarchal wannabes have gone mad.

Maybe it’s a post-pandemic disorder, even if COVID cases are predicted to surge again this fall. So many men are mean. They’re angry. They’re greedy. They’re ruthless. They’re cold-blooded killers. They’re delusional. They’re narcissists. And they’re taking it out on the working class and the peasants.

Men in positions of authority are beating their chests around the world, from the big prick in the Kremlin to the equally big pricks in Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea and China down to the little twits on factory floors and offices everywhere.

Maybe, just maybe the revolution being led by females in Afghanistan will spread around the world. Maybe control can be wrested from mad patriarchs, and we can have a peaceful world without an economic system designed to enrich a few and enslave and crush everyone else.

The world is in desperate need of an overhaul.

I know, that’s a stretch.

They would kill every one of us before they give up their troughs.

Enter Putin. Armageddon.

Maybe it’s destiny.

Rebuild from the ashes of nuclear devastation.

But you gotta know it would be the same old story next time round, eh?

Click, click . . .

— Jillian